WHY WE DON'T SUCK: AND HOW ALL of US NEED to STOP BEING SUCH PARTISAN LITTLE BITCHES (audiobook) by Denis Leary

Published by Random House Audio in November of 2017.
Read by the author, Denis Leary.
Duration: 6 hours, 36 minutes.
Unabridged.

This sequel to his 2008 book, Why We Suck: A Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid, is an up and down work and not quite as good as his earlier effort.

Why We Don't Suck starts out very strong, with Denis Leary lashing out at both of the main candidates in the 2016 Presidential Election and their uncritical supporters. The book slows down as Leary tells the story of 11 Americans that inspire him. 

After that, the book nearly grinds to a halt as Leary sort of meanders about being critical of a number of things. He settles on religion for a while, gets into a convoluted discussion of cursing and also launches into an extended bit that starts as a riff off of President Trump's featuring Twitter feeds but devolves into "What if...?" Twitter feeds of past Presidents and, sadly, expands to include other world leaders, including Idi Amin. Really? An Idi Amin joke in 2017? He's only been out of power since 1979!

Happily, the book picks up towards the end. Leary writes about his own struggles meeting celebrities that are bigger than him, such as Paul McCartney and David Bowie. But, his funniest stories involve Keith Richards, simply because of their surreal nature. He also has several funny stories of being mistaken for other celebrities, including Willem Defoe, Kevin Bacon, Jon Bon Jovi and, oddly enough, Ellen DeGeneres.

What does any of the previous two paragraphs have to do with why America doesn't suck? I don't know - and, really, that's the problem with the book. It suffers from serious thesis drift until the end of the book when Leary expresses a serious amount of admiration for Millennials.

In short, due to the up and down nature of the book, I rate it 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Why We Don't Suck: And How ALl of Us Need to Stop Being Such Partisan Little Bitches by Denis Leary. 

THE VICTORS: EISENHOWER and HIS BOYS: THE MEN of WORLD WAR II (abridged audiobook) by Stephen E. Ambrose

Originally published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 1998.
Read by Cotter Smith.
Duration: 4 hours, 20 minutes.
Abridged.

I don't know how many books historian Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) wrote about the D-Day Invasion, but they all a little different and they are all quite enjoyable to read. Ambrose is perhaps most famous for writing the history that inspired HBO's excellent Band of Brothers, which was also based on the same theme.

Ambrose had a gift for writing histories that were informative, entertaining and, at times, quite moving - and this one was no exception. The focus was on the D-Day invasion, the immediate aftermath, the Battle of the Bulge and the final push into Germany. There is no discussion of how the war started and little of how it ended, but almost everyone who would read this book knows all of that anyway.

The audiobook was read by Cotter Smith who did a nice job.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: THE VICTORS: EISENHOWER and HIS BOYS: THE MEN of WORLD WAR II (abridged).

FREAK the MIGHTY by Rodman Philbrick

Originally Published in 1993.

Freak the Mighty is the story of a lonely gentle giant named Max and his tiny Kevin, nicknamed "Freak", become neighbors and eventually the best of friends in this "coming of age" story.

Max lives in the basement of his grandparents' house. His grandparents are raising him because his father, Killer Kane, killed his mother. Other kids taunt Max because of this. Max just goes through the motions at school.

One day, Max meets Kevin (Freak). Kevin has Morquio Syndrome which has caused him to be very small. But, Kevin is also very bright and very willing to engage the world. Max, despite his large size, would prefer to be ignored by everyone. Kevin begins taking Max on so-called quests - basically they are exploring the neighborhood but Kevin makes them sound so much more interesting once he describes these trips in his own imaginative style.

Max carries Freak on his shoulders as they travel, an arrangement that works out well for both of them. Freak can travel more freely on Max's shoulders and Max discovers that he is not nearly as dimwitted as he thought he was - you can't be slow in the head and keep up with Freak. Freak says that the two of them, when combined, are a new thing called "Freak the Mighty".

There are two issues these young friends have to deal with, however - Freak's failing health and the legacy of Killer Kane in Max's life...

My daughter read this book in her sixth grade class (the whole class read it together) so I decided to read it as well. It's a good story, even if it is a little cliche, but it still gets you in the end - "right in the feels" as a former high school student of mine would say. There is a sequel, but I doubt I'll read it - I liked the way things were left at the end of this story.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick.

AMERICAN CIVIL WARS: THE UNITED STATES, LATIN AMERICA, EUROPE and the CRISIS of the 1860s (audiobook) by Don H. Doyle

I tried. I really did.

Published in 2017 by Tantor Audio.
Read by Johnny Heller and Jo Anna Perrin.
Duration: 8 hours, 58 minutes.
Unabridged.

The premise of American Civil Wars is interesting. The idea is to place the American Civil War in the context of the currents of the politics of the larger world of the time in order to show how the war changed the politics of other areas (prime examples are the Dominican Republic and Mexico - both were invaded by European powers while the United States was unable to enforce the Monroe Doctrine) and how those outside political forces influenced the Civil War. One of the stated goals is that teachers read this book and try to bring these insights to their students in the classroom.

Don H. Doyle is the editor of this book. I think that it more accurate to say that he "collected" a series of essays by experts in non-American history that focused on how the Civil War affected their regions. I wish he had been a true editor because this book would have been much less repetitive. I estimate that 2 hours or more of judicial editing could be done to this 9 hour audiobook and do nothing but improve it. As I stated above, this book is supposedly aimed at the non-professional historian, but the writing is almost uniformly done in a dry academic style. The sentences are quite lengthy and hard to follow, especially in the audiobook format. It's not like I am unfamiliar with the topic - this is my 101st review of a Civil War-related book since 2001 and I read many more  before I started reviewing regularly. And, it's not like I am not used to audiobooks - this is 458th audiobook review.

The readers were also an issue. There are two. The first is Johnny Heller. I am literally a big fan of Johnny Heller as an audiobook reader, but he was completely miscast when he was hired to read this book. Audiobook readers are essentially actors performing the book. Heller reads very quickly, which is not usually a problem. But, with the length of these sentences (you can hear the semi-colons and parenthetical insertions), it was hard to keep track of what he was saying sometimes. To solve this, I was forced to re-set my phone's playback to 80% of the normal speed.

Jo Anna Perrin's readings, though, were worse. Robotic is the best description. It is full of strange pauses that remind me of a caricature of William Shatner at his worst. I assumed that she was a friend of the editor who persuaded him that she should read half of this audiobook. I was very surprised to see that she reads a lot of audiobooks. Hopefully, this is not her typical work. Oh, and yes, I did re-set my phone to play at normal speed.

I tried to finish it. I made it 6 hours and 58 minutes and then started listening to an essay that was literally covering the same ground as the previous one and just couldn't do it any longer. I literally have no problem with the research that went into the book or the conclusions of the authors. My problem in entirely in the presentation of the facts. I am reminded of this quote: "No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read." - David McCullough.

I rate this audibook 1 star out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: AMERICAN CIVIL WARS: THE UNITED STATES, LATIN AMERICA, EUROPE and the CRISIS of the 1860s by Don H. Doyle.

ONE SUMMER: AMERICA, 1927 (audiobook) by Bill Bryson

Published by Random House Audio in 2013.
Read by the author, Bill Bryson.
Duration: 17 hours, 3 minutes.
Unabridged.

Bill Bryson's One Summer: America, 1927 is an immensely interesting book, as would any book that featured Charles Lindbergh, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Sacco and Vanzetti, Jack Dempsey, Gutzon Borglum, Charles Ponzi, Al Capone, Al Jolson, Zane Grey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Henry Ford, several Hollywood stars and more.

Boxing champ Jack Dempsey (1895-1983)

The book starts out with the story of Charles Lindbergh and the other flyers that were attempting to cross the Atlantic in a non-stop flight to claim the $25,000 Orteig Prize.

Bryson moves on to tell the stories of the other people I named above - often cleverly lacing them together with the story of Charles Lindbergh. We learn about baseball, boxing, Hollywood (there's a hilarious story about Jack Dempsey with a starlet), the beginnings of "talkies" and the movie palaces, the rise of radio networks, the first experiments with television, the beginnings of America's fascination with the automobile, Prohibition and Al Capone's brief career. There were a lot of bombings in the 1920's and Sacco and Vanzetti may have participated in some of them.

About those bombings - I have a theory that certain horrific crimes become "trendy" - they become the thing to do when you want to make some sort of "statement." School shootings are that statement nowadays. In the late 1980's and early 1990's there were a rash of workplace shootings by postal workers, thus the term "going postal." In the 1920's it was bombings. Some were politically motivated, some were motivated by family stresses, such as the worst school piece of school violence ever - the Bath Township elementary school bombing in 1927.

As he tells the story of the summer of 1927, the reader realizes that America was being introduced to a lot of new things in the 1920's that are a normal part of everyday life in modern America such as consumer culture (paying by way of installment plans was a new concept), big time sports, radio networks (paving the way for TV and other media networks), presidential trips and even gang violence over banned drugs (in this case it was alcohol, but the same lessons apply with other drugs nowadays).

Bryson is not fond of any of the Presidents in the 1920's and he justifies that disdain pretty well. Herbert Hoover comes off as a first-rate pompous self-promoter, even if he was very effective at feeding millions of people after World War I. Calvin Coolidge was treated a little too roughly, in my opinion. The more I hear about Warren G. Harding, the more I am amazed at his staggering incompetence and crudity.

The audiobook was read by the author. I warmed up to his reading style after an hour or so, mostly because I kept trying to place his accent. Bryson grew up in Iowa but has lived most of his adult life in the U.K. This has left him with an ambiguous accent not unlike that of Cary Grant or Katharine Hepburn.

This was one of my favorite books of the summer and I heartily recommend it.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: One Summer: America, 1927. 

LANDS of LOST BORDERS: A JOURNEY on the SILK ROAD by Kate Harris

Published in 2018 in the United States by Dey Street Books.

Kate Harris and her childhood friend Mel decided to go on a bicycle adventure that approximates Marco Polo's trip along the Silk Road from Turkey to China. This is not a trip taken on a whim. Harris has read about explorers and dreamed about being an explorer all of her life. She's a scientist by training but she can't stand to be in a lab - she has to get out and see the world.

Actually, she started out wanting to go to Mars and actually went so far as to participate in a Mars simulation complete with spacesuits out in the Utah desert.  The simulation told her one important thing - being in a space suit denied her the tactile experience of exploration such as the wind in your hair and the smells.

So, rather than Mars, she decides to go to one of the most remote areas of the world, for a couple of Canadians - Central Asia. It has vast deserts, literally the tallest mountains in the world and arcane bureaucracies that sometimes make it about as challenging as a trip to Mars.

Kate Harris is a talented writer and her descriptions of her trip in Lands of Lost Borders are a joy to read. The people, the weather, the animals, the troubles getting permission to cross one border after another - especially the troubles with the border into China-controlled Tibet.  The real fun, though, is with little details that she pops into the story that made me want to go tell my family all about them such as the fact that there is a word in Georgia that says, "I accidentally ate the whole thing." 

My favorite, though, took place in Tajikistan. A family let them stay the night in their home rather than camp out. The mother fed them dinner and insisted that she share cell phone numbers with Kate and Mel even though the woman lived in a cell phone dead zone and they didn't understand a word the other said. But, she just couldn't let those two women head off down the road without a friend to call on. It was sweet and a very human moment.

This was a fantastic read and I rate it an enthusiastic 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: LANDS of LOST BORDERS: A JOURNEY on the SILK ROAD by Kate Harris.

THE INFLUENTIAL MIND: WHAT the BRAIN REVEALS ABOUT OUR POWER to CHANGE OTHERS (audiobook) by Tali Sharot

Published by Macmillan Audio in 2017.
Read by Xe Sands.
Duration: 5 hours, 24 minutes.
Unabridged.

Tali Sharot has written an interesting little book about our brains and the way they work. Clearly, she is an expert with a PhD in psychology and neuroscience, but she has that rare talent of being able to make the complicated seem pretty basic using real life examples.

If you've ever had an online argument, you know the frustration of doing research to show your opponent that they are clearly wrong, only to have them completely ignore the facts.

I recently had this experience with an online story posted by a friend about a single truck stop in a nationwide chain that had stopped flying the American flag. The "reporter" asked a cashier why the flag was not out and he said it was because they didn't want to offend drivers from Mexico. Boom! Big story, right? It turns out that their oversized flag pole's mechanism for raising and lowering the flag was broken and it was going to be fixed soon - not a conspiracy to insult America. I linked two articles about the true story behind the flag and still people continued to pile on about immigrants and crappy un-patriotic American companies even though it clearly wasn't even a real story.

What was that all about? Sharot starts with this phenomenon - it's called confirmation bias. Everyone tends to see the facts of any situation in such a way that they confirm what they already know. We make fun of conspiracy theorists for this (the fact that we don't have more proof that we faked the moon landings just shows how good the conspirators are at covering it up, right?!?!). However, it turns out we all do this with all kinds of less obviously conspiratorial matters.

The author.

For me, the most interesting thing was "the power of agency". In short, if the other person feels like they are participating in some way, you can influence them.  We are hard-wired to like choices and to feel like we are needed. Sharot refers to a study that involved nursing home residents who were given a plant to take care of - a plant that depended on the resident because there was no way that the staff had time to water it or make sure it sat in the sun (not true, of course). Those residents did much better because they had something depending on them. We need choice and we need to be needed - two important thing to remember in life.

This is the first audiobook that I have listened to that was read by Xe Sands. This is weird because she is a prolific audiobook reader and I am a prolific audiobook reviewer (this is my 456th audiobook review). Also, I am online "friends" with audiobook reviewers that know her. Because of that very loose connection I always note her name when I read reviews or look through audiobooks. She sounded exactly like a confident PhD in psychology and neuroscience making a particularly well-done presentation to a group of laypeople in an extended TED Talk. I finally get to hear Xe Sands in action and she nailed it.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE INFLUENTIAL MIND: WHAT the BRAIN REVEALS ABOUT OUR POWER to CHANGE OTHERS by Tali Sharot.